Monday, July 22, 2013

Today’sJournal Note for a Play: @ She: “Had I known then, what I know now, that we were too young, and it was just our brimming desire that bound us… @ He: “But has desire left while we were not looking? In the twilight of our years, I set you free. Our harbour is, after all, not named Regret…and the Streetcar it was on was not even named Desire…” @ Both: After a quick giggle, they fell silent. 07-22-13

The River as mother to the sea entraps usinto this womblike feeling of ease.She draws us to this discovery of need,a foregone joy, our quiet helplessness.

We are the river that has run its courseinto an engulfment of this restless sea.

How far have we gone away from Nara?How long have we silently gone astray?Does the river current come full circlefrom the breaking waves of this sea?Do we meet each other, dreamlike,in the endless stream of all Lachines?

The river runs full circle, and yet and yet,we dread we have not even, halfway, met.When will my currents flow into your rocks,you distant sea, you entrapment of need?

When do we come back as rivuletsin some warm, some hidden rock spring?

Will we even find an engulfment of ease?When will the sea create the river?When will the river create the sea?Where they meet in the trickle of a stonegarden, who laves the rolling river stones?Who will lap the greenwood’s shores?

Saturday, March 16, 2013

THIS ITEM WAS
FORWARDED TO ME BY REV. FR. FRACISCO ALBANO, OSB, FROM THE DIOCESE OF ILAGAN,
IN THE NORTHERN PHILIPPINE PROVINCE OF ISABELA.

The story of the outsider Pope.

By Peter Stanford

Pope
Francis is not the sort of churchman given to writing weighty tomes. In his 76
years, he has produced just one book. Indeed, his practical bent may have been
one of the reasons the cardinals chose him as successor to the bookish Benedict
XVI.

In
his years as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is said
to have turned down almost every media request for interviews, but he did allow
himself time in 2010 to engage in a series of “conversations” about his life
and work with journalists Sergio Rubin and Francesca Ambrogetti. These were
subsequently collected in a book, called simply El Jesuita. The title is important to understanding how the new
pope defines himself. Of all the many breaks with tradition that the election
of Pope Francis represents, the fact that he is the first Jesuit ever to sit on
Saint Peter’s throne gives the best indication of how this pontificate is
likely to develop.

For
all their power and prestige, the Jesuits have a curious, checkered reputation
— admired and envied by some as the creme
de la crème of the Catholic religious orders, but loathed and feared by
others, who use “Jesuitical” as a term of abuse to refer to anything clever and
cunning.

Their
foundation by Ignatius Loyola in 1540 is usually seen as a key moment in the
Counter-Reformation, the Catholic fight-back after Martin Luther’s break with
Rome that means we still have a papacy five centuries later. The quasi-military
tone of some of Loyola’s directives to his followers, set out in his Spiritual
Exercises, has caused Jesuits to be dubbed “papal stormtroopers”, “God’s
marines” or, in the words of one church historian, “new athletes to combat
God’s enemies.”

While
it is true that Jesuits have played a major role in extending the authority of
the papacy around the world, to paint them as the pope’s unwavering palace
guard is a mistake. Indeed, the relationship between the Society of Jesus — to
give the Jesuits their proper name — and the papacy has often been troubled. So
troubled that they were suppressed by papal decree between 1773 and 1814. And
then, in 1981, Pope John Paul II imposed his own man, Paolo Dezza, to lead the
Society when its popular reforming Superior-General, Pedro Arrupe, was felled
by a stroke. Such interference in the Jesuits’ structures was deeply resented.

What
lies at the heart of such tensions is the Jesuit tendency to combine loyalty
with independence of mind. Father Arrupe, for example, had enthusiastically
embraced liberation theology — the “preferential option for the poor” widely
adopted by the Latin American church in the 1970s — but back in Rome John Paul
and his enforcer, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, regarded
this approach with enormous suspicion, seeing it as tainted with Marxism.
Parachuting in Father Dezza was just one part of a campaign to show the Jesuits
who was in charge.

This
unhappy episode is so recent that it makes Pope Francis’s election all the more
remarkable. The Jesuits have often appeared to operate as a church within a
church, and, occasionally, as an intellectually arrogant one at that. In
Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, still popular to this day, they have their own
manual, to supplement the gospels. Like all other religious orders, they
operate outside the formal diocesan structures that otherwise bind the 1.2
billion Catholics worldwide to the Vatican, but the Jesuits are distinctive in
having a flexible devolved model that allows them to respond to regional
differences and circumstances. That is the antithesis of the papacy’s claim to
govern all Catholics, wherever they are, by the same rules.

And then the Jesuits also have the
temerity to refer (admittedly colloquially) to their leader, chosen by a
democratic vote of all members, as “the black pope.” It is a description that
contrasts their traditional simple black cassock with the pope’s white robes.

Jesuits,
then, are both at the very heart of the system and one step removed from it.
That independence may have helped Cardinal Bergoglio stand out in the Sistine
Chapel. He was, after all, the only Jesuit there. If you need a new broom to
sort out warring bureaucrats in the curia (as most recently revealed by the
so-called “Vatileaks” scandal), who better than someone from the
insider/outsider Society of Jesus? If you need someone sufficiently removed
from the fray to take a long, hard look at where the Church has been getting it
wrong of late (notably over the pedophile priests scandal), who better than a
member of a religious order famed for its cool intelligence and
clear-sightedness?

Well
yes, but there is another pitfall in such analysis. It shouldn’t be assumed
that all those with the letters SJ (Society of Jesus) after their name are cut
from the same cloth. What is striking about Loyola’s legacy — which the 20,000
Jesuits globally gather periodically in General Congregation to consider — is
that it can be interpreted in almost as many ways as there are vibrant
individuals who subscribe to it. It has been a weather vane for developments in
the wider church.

The
Jesuits have often appeared to operate as a church within a church, and,
occasionally, as an intellectually arrogant one at that

In broad terms, Loyola began by
launching a reform movement in Europe in the wake of the Reformation that
harassed heretics. Then he evolved into inspiring a missionary enterprise
around the world, following in the footsteps of another Jesuit luminary,
Francis Xavier, who travelled to India and Japan, and whose memory is as
celebrated in Cardinal Bergoglio’s choice of papal name as Francis of Assisi.

Where
that global mission was originally in league with the colonial powers, the
Jesuits thereafter “went native.” Pope Francis’s mission in the slums of Buenos
Aires, travelling on buses, washing the feet of lepers, and eschewing all other
symbols of power and authority, is just the latest interpretation of Loyola’s
imperative to live out the faith with vigour.

If you then move on to considering
noted recent Jesuits, the Society of Jesus is so wide-ranging that the North
American province was capable of including Daniel Berrigan, the U.S. peace
activist jailed in 1970 for burning Vietnam draft cards; John McLaughlin, known
as “Nixon’s priest” for his work as an apologist for the Republican president;
and Robert Drinan, who sat as a Democrat member of the House of
Representatives.

That
same plurality can be seen today in the 200 members of the British province. It
manages collectively to reconcile custodianship of London’s smartest Catholic
parish church (Farm Street in Mayfair, beloved of celebrity weddings and
high-profile conversions), trusteeship of Stonyhurst boarding school,
involvement in such radical groups as Jesuit Refugee Action, and one member who
works as a doctor with homeless people.

So
what is it that binds them all together — beyond history and reading the
Spiritual Exercises? At its simplest, a radical social conscience that is
bigger than either left or right in politics, or traditional and liberal labels
in Catholicism, combined with unyielding moral postures. Pope Francis will not
be setting about dismantling the Church’s teaching on sexuality — that is not
the Jesuit way. He will uphold the ideals, but concentrate on dealing with the
realities of life.

There
can be no doubting that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is steeped in Jesuit
spirituality. He joined the Society at the age of 21. His background as a
chemist is shared with many other Jesuits, who are bright enough to balance
what are often seen as the poles of religion and science. The future pope’s
training stretched over 11 years before his ordination as a priest — compared
to the standard six for diocesan vocations — after which he taught theology at
the Jesuit faculty in San Miguel, and later served as rector there. In between,
he spent seven tough years as Jesuit Provincial — the senior Jesuit — in
Argentina.

These were unhappy times — for him, the Society and Argentina at large.
He carried out a root-and-branch reform of its activities, which may count in
the eyes of the cardinal-electors as good preparation for the challenge he now
faces with the Vatican curia, but which still sticks in the throat of many of
his fellow Jesuits in the province.

His leadership coincided with the reign of terror of the military junta
and its flagrant abuse of human rights. Accusations were made subsequently that
as provincial, Pope Francis was not as outspoken as he could have been in
condemning the “disappearances” of the regime’s critics, and that he failed
adequately to defend two Jesuit priests arrested and tortured by the junta.

In El Jesuita, he vehemently rejects all these charges, but there
is a lingering sense that there may have been a period of estrangement between
the former provincial and his fellow Jesuits once he stood down. Indeed, on the
website of the archdiocese of Buenos Aires — to which he was appointed an
assistant bishop in 1992, and head in 1998 — there was for many years no
mention at all that he was even a Jesuit, or of his past role as provincial. Some
reports say that he was closer for a time to Communion and Liberation — best
known as a European lay movement, most influential in Italy, where its
enthusiastic backing of social action was later tainted by being associated
with right-wing politicians, including Silvio Berlusconi.

Whatever the truth of such rumours, his record as archbishop — “Father
Jorge”, to the poor, marginalized and dispossessed whose cause he promoted
tirelessly — was Jesuitical in the best sense of the world. His notion of
Christian liberation is not simply about being free from sin, but also from
poverty and injustice. Such sentiments are rooted broadly in Catholic social
teaching, but it is the unique mixture of contemplation and activity that is
the hallmark of the Spiritual Exercises, and which now appears set to define
the reign of Pope Francis SJ.

The Author

ALBERT B. CASUGA, a Philippine-born writer, lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where he continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism after his retirement from teaching and serving as an elected member of his region's school board. He was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. A graduate of the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Thomas (now University of Santo Tomas, Manila. Literature and English, magna cum laude), he taught English and Literature (Criticism, Theory, and Creative Writing) at the Philippines' De La Salle University and San Beda College. He has authored books of poetry, short stories, literary theory and criticism. He has won awards for his works in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Philippines. His latest work, A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems was published February 2009 by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. His fiction and poetry were published by online literary journals Asia Writes and Coastal Poems recently.
He was a Fellow at the 1972 Silliman University Writers Workshop, Philippines. As a journalist, he worked with the United Press International and wrote an art column for the defunct Philippines Herald.